Human Rights Day: The Role of Business in Respecting People and Their Rights - Seite 4

SR: Indeed! According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 160 million children are still engaged in child labor. More than 27 million people around the world are in conditions of forced labor. And globally, 2.4 billion women of working-age are still not afforded equal economic opportunity. These are just some numbers that underline the need for more action by businesses.

The good news is that mandatory human rights due diligence helps get more companies on board and strengthen the efforts of those that already are. There is good and open exchange and mutual learning among companies. It therefore seems less of a competition in which one enterprise strives to outperform the others. You rather share experiences and gain insights where you are already doing really well and where you can further improve.

Overall, I would say that SAP has been progressing well and is on track but can still do even better. Our ambition definitely is to not limit ourselves to compliance with mandatory human rights due diligence, but to go beyond.

Q: Looking into the future, what trends and challenges do you see?

DS: I believe that the momentum for taking respect for human rights seriously in business will further increase, driven not only by legislative pressure but also increasing stakeholder expectations. It's important, however, that we as business leaders do not get consumed by navigating the regulatory landscape and ensuring compliance. Let's not allow this to become a check-box exercise - we must keep people in the center. The aim is to improve people's lives.

SR: I fully agree. Some of the legislation does keep you very busy with a lot of administrative burden. This unfortunately takes away your attention and resources from ultimately making a difference for the affected people. I also see a risk that because value chains are becoming ever more complex with reliable data missing and because managing the human rights risks down to tier-n can seem so overwhelming, companies chose to prioritize de-risking. They rather pull out of high-risk countries which may actually worsen the human rights situation. The increasing complexity of geopolitical crises and need for heightened due diligence further exacerbates this risk.